When a politician claims something is simple, what follows is usually political rhetoric and/or motherhood rather than anything factual. In this regard, Peter Kent’s simple post-Kyoto plan is devoid of substance and clearly represents a massive lack of understanding in terms of the complexities of national and global issues relating to climate change. If this was simple, there would have been a world environmental protection plan years ago.

The first part of Mr. Kent’s post-Kyoto plan is stated criticism of what occurred in the past. “Feel-good” symbolism of the past will be replaced by “real action” in the future. Real action consists of a commitment to a “realistic and comprehensive plan to reduce Canada’s GHG emissions by 17% below 2005 levels…” after having already achieved 25% of this goal. This sounds good except that spewing numbers relative to a goal does nothing to explain the “plan”. Partial achievement does not represent a plan, especially one that has been described as realistic and comprehensive and containing real action. A plan not only states goals, it also clearly outlines how these goals are to be achieved, milestones, time frames, etc.

Mr. Kent proceeds to explain why Canada withdrew from Kyoto and provides some detail through the provision of statistics which reveal nothing new. Why we withdrew from Kyoto does not represent a plan for the future but why we need a plan. Yet, Mr. Kent is supposedly outlining his plan!

Canada will undertake to “harmonize and align, where appropriate, our approaches with our neighbour [the U.S.] in the transportation sector.” Where appropriate? Sounds pretty much like a cop-out.

Canada will work to develop a new global climate-change agreement with legally binding commitments for all emitters. Well, good luck on that one! How does that really relate to a plan for Canada? And, doesn’t this sound somewhat like Kyoto only a different iteration?

Perhaps Mr. Kent would care to elucidate the type of legally binding commitments to which he refers and how Canada would enforce these with Canadian emitters and actually do it, and then present this information in a world forum. Now, that might be a plan!

Finally, the bottom line: Mr. Kent states that we must ensure we make pragmatic and realistic choices and ensure a balanced approach to the solution. In its entirety this represents Mr. Kent’s post-Kyoto plan and was most likely blessed by the Prime Minister’s Office since nothing press related gets released without its permission. Read this to mean that the PM also believes in simplicity. He also seems to believe that talking about a plan, constitutes a plan.

Lorne Werbenuk, Ottawa

Peter Kent does an excellent job discussing Canada’s withdrawal from Kyoto. He states why it was a good thing and how Canada’s plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions was realistic.

The trouble with his analysis is his acceptance that there are such phenomena as abnormal global warming going on right now, and that man’s production of greenhouse gases is the cause. For his benefit and for the benefit of all the other global warming defenders, there is solid scientific evidence that neither one of these two claims does exist.

Why this information has been largely ignored by media in current reporting is unjustifiable.

Would the Post please arrange for a public debate on these two factors between competent representatives of both sides?

No Canadian political party is prepared to do this, even though the cost of cutting back on man’s production of carbon dioxide is potentially monumental. No Canadian political party has properly addressed this issue, which may be the greatest con job inflicted on society in recent times.

Thanks to National Post for effectively presenting the scientific facts on this topic by your outstanding commentators over the years.

Second, when Mr. Kent says we are one-quarter of the way to our 2020 goal, it means that combining every provincial and federal measure both in place and under consideration, and projecting out to 2020 assuming all goes according to plan, we will reach only 25% of our goal. That means 75% of the job is so far unimplemented and unplanned, except a vague reference to a sector-by-sector approach.

Globally, our performance in reducing emissions is among the worst of all industrialized countries since 1990. Hardly progress to brag about. To succeed in fighting climate change, we need an open and honest discussion about where we are, where were going, and what it will take to get there. So far, that hasn’t happened.

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